Improving the Tourism by Boosting Culture and Art

Tourism played a crucial role in the development of European regions and reduced the negative effects of the economic crisis due to Covid-19. Services and output created for touristic purposes contributed to local development by creating new jobs that compensated for the industrial or local decline and safeguarded and enhanced the natural and cultural heritage in areas like the arts, local gastronomy, and biodiversity conservation. The project was undoubtedly original and aimed to address the specific priority of post-Covid effects outlined by the European Commission: the genuine and effective promotion of cultural heritage combined with the development of an effective employment potential to support young people aspiring to work in the creative tourism sector. This sector was crucial and fundamental for the cities involved (Berlin, Kamnik, Hague, Sivrihisar and Topola). European cultural heritage played a vital role in shaping Europe's future, serving as one of the primary motivations for the project to offer with the project results created.

The project activities were intended to be impactful in several areas, including the acquisition of new skills, knowledge, and experiences in the promotion and valorization of cultural heritage. The project participants, while working across different countries and sectors, gained a broader perspective on methodologies applied to cultural goods at the European level. As previously stated, there was an expectation of a significant impact on all direct and indirect participants in the event, as the project aimed to produce concrete results in the following areas: - Digital innovation - Territorial promotion - Cultural heritage promotion - Active citizenship promotion in the creative and cultural departments - Involvement of disadvantaged target groups with significant employment needs - Boosting the workforce The project created tangible work opportunities in a sector of significant interest and potential, thanks to the territorial promotion that the European Commission had been implementing over the years by designating the European Capital Cities of Culture. It was certain that most of the NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) young people and many professionals could get benefit of the project.

The ITbyCultureArt Project's main goal was to generate a series of educational instruments (toolkits) designed to achieve three specific project results that could be applied to the European cultural tourism market. This was done through a program that included mobility activities and training abroad for the partner organizations. The activity schedule was managed within a Pan-European strategic partnership, comprised of organizations with expertise in the promotion and valorization of cultural heritage, and was followed by a complex process that lasted 24 months. ITbyCultureArt aimed to oversee the realization of these products through international experiences, promoted by a strategic partnership with organizations that had expertise in theater, design, digital programming, and storytelling methods applied to cultural heritage from Germany, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Serbia. The partnership sought to develop and share the best practices gained by individual organizations to foster a collective approach to work. The project included: - Educational training activities - Various project meetings, preparatory for the realization of three intellectual outputs that were to be presented at multiplier events, which each partner organized in their own country, targeting an audience of citizens and European/extra-European tourists. PR1- Theatrical Performances: A series of theatrical guided tours featured "guiding actors" wearing historical costumes, who highlighted the principal historical and artistic points of interest in the European cities involved. PR2- Digital Platform: A digital platform was established and chosen (Google Drive App Suite) to store research material on the content developed within the project, enhancing the experience before and after the events. PR33- Experiential Augmented Reality App: An app for mobile devices was designed and linked to an analog map/game to: - Experience real-time created content with 360-degree photos - Guide the audience through the discovery of the designed path with videos - Provide animations with characters

The project applied training of the organization of a formative training (JSTE) for up to 16 people drawn from the project staff. It was planned to last a total of 7 days, including travel. JSTE developed an educational toolkit in a participative environment that was preparatory to the project results realization phase; - at the end of the project, it was given to those joining the local training seminars (to form the "Toolkits”). The main goal was to realize paths of cultural tourism characterized by “Theatrical Performances”, a program of theatrical tours with “Actors” who, with traditional attire, would impersonate, in a didactical play, mythical characters, guiding citizens and tourists through the discovery of details, histories, and places belonging to the cultural heritage of the European cities involved. The project realized a Digital Platform which was an accessory to the other project results, created to ease the diffusion of the reached results and the fruition of the experience to enhance the contents generated by the project, before and after the participation to the events of local spreading. Google Drive App Suite hosted all the information concerning the formative toolkit, the good practices, and the updates on the development process and the project's production. This Digital Platform instrument remains active even after the end of the project, pledging the sustainability of the results. The project created an app for mobile devices using augmented reality and linked it to a guide, imagined as both an accessory and an independent instrument. The goal of this was the use of the generated content even in real-time, through an interactive game that lead the visitor to the chosen points of interest, and a series of skill tests allowing the audience to live an interactive experience, becoming absorbed in the developed historical/touristic paths. Following the realization of the events, it was scheduled the organization of -Multiplier events to spread every project's results -Final seminars open to all those interested in the development of a workplace in cultural tourism. Those seminars intended to transfer the complete educational toolkit developed during the entire project, to obtain the main result of answering the professional and working needs of the participants, through a program of enhancing the skills/abilities and a walkthrough to the managing of the generated intellectual output. This way was a condition for their immission into the cultural tourism market is to be created. Link to the results; https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KeMfLQq3D5pmuhe-UyNZy3drl9L4eE8S?usp=sharing Link to the APP; https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/culture-art/id6464394314?l